District 4
by Kida Lydianna
Summary: A glance into what life was like in District 4. A culture study. characters will connect to hunger games characters in some way. A one shot short story. I do not own the hunger games.I should be doing one on each district to get a sense the District life.


**A glance into what life was like in District 4. From a point of view of a person lives in the District while the Hunger Games reigned. ****All of my characters will connect to Hunger Games characters in some way. ****I do not own the Hunger Games. I should be making short stories on all of the Districts, maybe even one that will glance into Capitol life. My perception of the different lives anyway. I do not own the Hunger Games.  
**

**A short story. **

**District 4**

My father never knew why my husband hunted the big fish. Growing up as a simple net-man, my father and his brothers would wait out into the shallow ends of the sea and sweep their tangle of ropes beneath the murk, never having to leave ten feet from the shore. They would lift the catch into the air with a satisfied smile, and take it home to mother and me. It was the easy life.

He never saw why anyone could want anything else.

Dinners at my home just before my wedding day were filled with mumblings from him.

"He does it for the glory of it. And that only. Much too dangerous of a man for my youngest child."

I never swayed when he would say these things, I would answer them coolly without hesitation, sweet and confident.

"He's proud of his work."

I put another forkful of muscle into my mouth while my siblings fidgeted awkwardly in the chairs beside us and mother remained reticent, always quiet and reserved.

Annabelle, my only sister, would say something about his nature.

"He's too cocky. You can see it in the way he holds himself." She says this primly as she spreads an unstained white napkin across her lap.

My eldest brother would kick in then. "He chose Harpooning for the thrill. Not the stability."

"Some people aren't lucky enough to get a craft they love." I say nonchalantly.

"Still too tall."

"Too poor."

"Too lusty."

"A _spear_-man!"

"I think he's a fine sailor."

Mother's soft voice would ring quietly then, reassuring me with a squeeze of my shoulder.

"Oh, hush Lydia, you don't know anything. I see the boy every day in the harbor. Always with that crew of scoundrels," father scolds.

My mother faintly shrugs, "Well I like him."

I would reward her with a kindly glance while my brothers and sisters joined my father with his scoffing.

There had always been a sort of solidarity between us, our hands would bind together whenever father would talk down upon her, and I would squeeze her fingers when she was brave enough to speak up.

"Don't marry him, Manna." My father had finally said that spring.

But I had shook my head and walked away from a raging, cursing man that had always spit at the feet of sailors, and now whose own kin was walking away to marry a vagabond.

* * *

"I used to collect sea glass."

"What for?" Kal asks me, gently swiping a piece of black hair from my forehead and curling it neatly behind my ear.

"Fish hooks."

Kal's eyes light up. "That's a language I speak."

I laugh. "They used to be pretty good."

He rolls off our bed and stretches his arms. "While I'm away today, you get the ones that glint the most, and when I come home," he says as he plops his hat on his head, "you will show me your skill with these hooks."

I nod happily. "Alright."

I'm quiet as he dresses, contentedly remembering the night before our wedding when I had scoured the beach searching for relief from the nervousness writhing in my stomach like a worm.

I was certain my brothers and father would crash the party while my sister looked smugly on and my mother hid behind the scalping sheds.

But when the time came, my brothers drank their disapproval away and my sister insisted on cleaning the place.

Before my father had tied the ribbon around our wrists, he had leaned in and whispered into my ear.

Expecting a hateful remark, I had braced myself while mother held her breath behind me.

"I always knew you were the brave one."

Then he had pressed a kiss on my cheek and slapped a hand onto Kal's shoulder and binded us forever.

When the ceremony was finished, my new husband and I had kissed and danced and laughed while mother cried happily in the corner and father urged the drummers to beat faster.

Kal reaches onto the wall to grab his harpoon that scales our wall and takes it upon himself to kiss me.

He stops to pull me closer and whispers a love secret to me and slips his hand over my rounded belly.

I giggle girlishly as he pulls on his boots and is swiftly out the door.

* * *

I find a piece that is green.

The shade of green matches the color that surrounds my pupil exactly.

It's surprising really, almost as if I had been carved from the sea with the glass placed in my fist during my creation and the color washed onto my retina.

I spot plenty of Lighting Whelk and Little Slippers, but I only fish out the glass, though I am always tempted to make necklaces out of the shells. I give in when I spot Seamaid toenails. They are a shell rounded, and all around the same size, simple and flat and wan. I always find them singularly. Only the top of the shell, never connected to a finishing bottom. They are my favorite.

I pocket both and spot Kal's harpooning boat in the distance and leave my footprints in the sand.

I don't notice the clouds until later.

* * *

I finished my green hook just before the air changed.

It became moist and limped lethargically on the wind while the heat spiked.

I step gingerly around the glass shavings that have fallen onto the floor and sweep them up. I hum to myself softly and try to drown out the gusts that beats against our white washed house.

Our home was built by Kal and his brothers with lumber from 7, but salt from the sea wind is engrained into the fibers, turning the pleasant brown into a brittle, pallid carapace.

It sits on the edge. On the edge of the district, on the edge of the town, on the edge of the sea. It's a perfectly square, one room house with harpooning spears lining the four walls. Nets hang from the corners next to our one closet and besides our cabinets. Tallow from Kal's catches is stashed in metal containers in the cool crawl space beneath our kitchen floorboards.

Water is a heartbeat away, especially during high tide when it's just a few steps to the left of our front door.

To our right is the fence leading to oblivion. Behind it is just the forest, dark and mysterious. Something I know nothing about. Sometimes I wonder how far it is to the next district, to the next road, to the next anything through the occult dark.

Our elders spin tales of wicked creatures that leech out the weak if they get too close. I have never seen such a creature, but the stories are enough to scare my people away.

Behind us lies the road into town. Nothing else is on it except the scalding sheds. Our men and women shell crayfish and scale the big catches there.

But there isn't anything else.

It's funny. Our house faces nothing. Just the in-between. The forest on the right, the ocean on the left.

Kal says the foundation of this house was built many, many years ago. He and his brothers just built up from the ruins.

"Before the dark days," he had once whispered to me, "There was a town, but it now sits at the bottom."

"The bottom?"

Kal had nodded. "Of the Ocean. I've seen it, just sunken and disintegrating. I'll never forget it."

The house must have sat on the edge then too. Alone, while it's community drowned.

Kal and I have draped blankets on the inside to keep the heat in, but now I find myself unhinging the blankets from the nails above and open the window behind it.

The heat breaks through the opening and I gasp as the humidity fills the room.

The darkness catches me off guard.

I press my palm on my swelling belly and feel the kicking that calms me.

I step outside and try to glimpse Kal's boat. The waves have turned choppy and deep purple with white caps crashing loudly. There's no boat.

My stomach rises up into my throat, but I force it down with a swallow.

Clutching at a shirt of Kal's, I sit in the rocking chair his brother gave to me on our wedding day and try to rest my sore, swelling feet.

I wait for the bell.

I chew my nails.

I wait for the bell.

When it does ring, I hear it through a veiled silence. As if this is another person's circumstance, not mine.

It vibrates my eardrums and detaches my numb body from my mind.

In a daze I sit up from my rocking chair and leave our lonely house into town.

When I see Kal's boat heading for shore I almost shout for joy.

But when I see the brother ship crashed onto the far reef I think about all of the men and young boys inside, and how so many will not be warmed by their mother's touch again.

It haunts me.

Pouring rain is beginning to soak through my thin summer dress and the day becomes pitch black.

I feel our child squirm and a wave of nausea overcomes me.

Through the sand and water blowing into my eyes, I have to swipe my dark hair from my eyes and squint at the tiny light swinging back and forth.

The rule is, when the bell goes on, the lights go off. The only light the sailor's should see is the lighthouse gleaming, leading the way home to their wives. When the bell goes off, you douse your kerosene, you rinse your coal, and if you have it, your electricity is cut.

In district 4, you do _not_ want to be the light that confuses the captains into a reef, or experience the wrath of angry widows.

I curse loudly.

"Hey!"

I yell at the light on the shore.

"Hey you!"

There's no answer, just the shape swinging their many lamps back and forth, back and forth, imitating the light house's rocking light.

I try to run towards the figure, but a pregnant woman is no match for a running wrecker.

I give up, the peacekeepers can knock some sense in the thief with the barrels of their guns.

I turn my direction back towards the town.

Most of the women are flocking towards the kitchens while the men with the nets sprint to the shore, my father is among them. I see him grab a large amount of rescue rope line and hand it to one of his brothers as they unwind it, ready to toss it to the first person they see.

I spot a black haired peacekeeper, rushing to sling his uniform over his head.

I screech and flap my arms at him like a madman.

He stops, and almost passes the mumbling, poor, harpooners pregnant wife, whose words are tied with fear. But when I finally slow my tongue enough to get out the word '_wrecker'_, he stops and zones in on the shore. When he spots the swaying imitation lights you can see the vein pop out of his forehead.

"This is exactly what happened last time." The man grumbles.

He curses and shouts for more help from the peacekeeper station.

My father and his brothers have already spotted the wrecker that seeks to crash the boat and steal the goods that wash ashore. A group of them have taken after him, but his many kerosene lamps weigh him down and he has to drop them, sending wasted oil onto the shore.

I join the other women in the kitchens that are fetching blankets and are brewing hot tea and biscuits for the cold and shivering seamen and the heartbroken-to-be-widows.

Annabelle is among them. "The reefed boat." She says shortly. "Was it his?" Her eyes show a guilt for every harsh word uttered to me on my choice of husband.

"No." I say it kindly because I can feel the regret generating from her. "His brother captains that one."

"Oh," she says softly.

"There was a wrecker." I say it a little too loudly and the other women in the kitchens suddenly quiet and look over at us.

"A wrecker?" A woman asks. "You told someone didn't you?"

I nod. "The dark haired peacekeeper."

The woman relaxes. "Oh, that's my brother. He'll burn him with his own spilled kerosene."

The women of the kitchens are satisfied with this thought and go back to their worried work.

"Manna, you should sit." Annabelle says then as she fetches me a chair. "You shouldn't be standing so much in your condition."

I shake my head. "No, Kal will want peppermint tea , he loves that."

My sister shrugs her shoulders.

We close all the windows so the lights inside the public kitchens won't lure any sailors to the wrong shore end. But the urge to know what's going on out side is tempting.

The young wives like me are shaking as they think about their sons and husbands on the boats.

Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe that _was_ Kal's boat that was reefed. Maybe he is drowning right now...

I shake myself and focus on the tea that will warm him when he comes home.

Someones cold hands find my waist and give me a squeeze.

"Mother." I say happily. Her presence comforts me.

She caresses my cheek. "It wasn't his." She says with relief.

I nod. "I know. I'm making him his peppermint tea."

"He'll like that."

"I saw father."

Mother nods, "He cares." She says simply.

Hours pass, women peak outside to keep us informed.

"They say they can only see two survivors from reefs." A younger girl says. "But they both are suffering from hypothermia."

We all frown and clear spaces for sailors beds so the older women can nurse them.

More time passes, and we all try to ignore the shouts of men and boys. We ignore the shrieking, wailing winds and crashing water, the sounds of splintering wood.

I picture Kal's cold dead, body, his reddish brown hair limp, and frozen with icicles.

My heart beats faster with steely dread.

His eyes shocked open, his blood frigid and still.

I make Kal seven cups. It's over the top but I want the one I love beside me so badly I think I might die.

"Your hands are shaking." Mother says.

"I'm frightened." I say weakly.

If there's one time my mother can be strong, it's when her children aren't. I can see it pump through her veins as it straightens her back and softens her face.

"Come here." She croons gingerly as I rest my cheek on her collarbone and try to think happy thoughts.

Tears spill onto her soft, pale skin as she runs her fingers through my thick black hair. "Hush, hush. Don't cry now."

We hear scuffling at the door and shouts of men in close proximity.

"They're coming!"

We women dash from the door as it swings open with a bang, and suddenly tall, looming, shouting men are rushing through the door and set a man and a boy onto the cots we laid out.

Annabelle rushes over and wraps the blue bodies in layers of blankets while others shove piping hot tea down their throats.

The man takes it gratefully, but the boy is unresponsive.

Mother begins to mumble about our districts policy on child labor as we watch the life leave his face.

Already I can see mother's power empty out of her as she watches it happen.

It's as if she is a vessel that courage cannot stand to remain in. She is too soft, too small to hold something as rugged as strength.

I pull her back to where the some of the rescue crew are slurping down the tea on the stoves as the women ring out their clothes and ruffle their wet hair.

The wives with surviving husbands run into their arms as they draw them in.

I begin scanning the crowd for the shock of hair that belongs to my heart.

I search for the tall muscular figure that surely is among the mass that is now herding into the kitchens.

I've lost my mother in the now crowded building, but I can hear Annabelle's shrill voice as she rations off the hot biscuits to the sailors.

I scan each tired face as towels and fresh linen are slung over their shoulders.

"Manna."

His tired voice sends relief washing through me.

I whip around and there he is, his arms extended, his eyes sad.

He holds me close and slams his mouth against mine. His body is so cold I yelp a little, and he lets go, panting.

I grab a towel and set him down in a chair. First, I take off his sopping boots, then his wet shirts and replace them with dry, warm blankets.

He mumbles something unintelligible, so I hand him the cups of tea that I had shoved in a corner so no one could take them.

"Here."

His eyes widen. "Gimmee!" He says childlike, and he begins to slurp them.

"Slow down." I insist, "You'll burn yourself."

"Manna."

"Yes?"

"Manna."

"What?" I say again, pulling myself closer to him.

"He's dead."

Sadness encases me.

"I know."

"My brother."

"I'm sorry."

"Finnick. He's dead. _My own_ _brother Finnick!_"

I hold his head in my lap as his blood begins to warm and sobs rack his shoulders.

"I could hear him!"

My throat tightens.

"I could hear him screaming! Fin! He's dead! I could _hear _him. Through all that wind and water-"

He sits up and holds my face in his hands looking me straight in the eye.

"A part of me wants to die, too."

He says it so seriously, so sorrowfully, it breaks my heart.

"I know." I say sadly, as he lays his head in my lap. "I know you do."

And we sit there, holding each other close, as the night burns itself out.

* * *

The wrecker was the peacekeeper from the capitol.

He had come to repay his debts.

He couldn't handle district life.

The tales of past wreckers had given him the idea.

I hope he knows all of the hurt that he had caused, because of his greed.

* * *

Finnick's body had washed ashore two days later.

Kal had quietly lifted his brother in his arms, and buried him beside his son whose name was on a slip of paper that was drawn from a glass bowl. Kal had been beside his brother as the boy had left on a train, and came back in a wooden box.

* * *

When Kal and I had heard my mother announce, "It's a boy," We had both smiled.

I place our son in Kal's arms and he says, "look, he has your eyes."

I had glanced down closely, and sure enough, a beautiful sea green.

"He has your hair." I say lightly as I ruffle his. Kal laughs.

"I think." I say faintly, still tired.

"Think what?"

"I name him Finnick."

His eyes smile.

"Thank you." He says, and kisses me softly.

"Happy Birthday, Finnick." My mother says.

* * *

_**REVIEW**_

_**REVIEW!REVIEW!REVIEW!REVIEW!REVIEW!REVIEW!REVIEWREVIEW!REVIEW!REVIEW!REVIEW!REVIEW!REVIEW!REVIEW!REVIEW!REVIEW!**_

seriously. i went through all that work to write review! seventeen flippin times

was there anything confusing?

there were alot of new words, some may not of understood. so everybody gets what a wrecker is? right? they actually did used to exist in the 17/1800s.

True. Story.

**Review! i love writing short stories. not as much to commit too. haha.**

Reviews. Would. Be. Appreciated.


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